Putcher Glasses on, People

And there’s this interesting article by Scott McLemee which is a good read in itself and also the cause that – there is much silliness among the commenters. Why does a piece by an omnivorous reader like Scott attract so many people who can’t read at all? People who read the label on a can of pineapple juice and think it contains Crisco? Dunno, but the result is pretty funny. Somebody started off by reading Scott’s “There are plenty of conservative publicists in America now. There are not many conservative thinkers, proper, worthy of the name” and, first, paraphrasing that as “America has lots of conservative pundits. But thinkers? Not so much,” which is a pretty bad job of paraphrasing (also pointless: why not just paste in the actual words?), and leads to an even worse retort: “You should do some reading then.” But then even better, people start giving examples of conservative thinkers [not publicists, remember – the whole point is thinkers as opposed to publicists] in America now. Like these:

“Frederick Hayak. Ayn Rand. Milton Friedman (or any of his fellow Nobel/economics winners). George Will. Pope John II.” “I would also add the late Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and Peter Viereck.”

See? They’re nearly all at least one of 1. dead 2. not in America 3. publicists but not thinkers. I find that sidesplittingly funny, somehow. Hey – what about Confucius! He was pretty conservative, right? Genghis Khan? Lycurgus?

I regurlarly find otheriwse interesting and intelligent blogs’ and journals’ comments sections dispiriting exercises in unintellectual, knee jerk, bitchiness… Jimmy Carr, an often rather nasty UK stand up comedian has quite a witty gag apropos to this: “A wise man once told me that no-one ever relly listens to you, they’re just waiting for their turn to speak. At least I think that’s what he said”. Quite.

The editor at IHE posted a comment yesterday that kind of explained the non-listening quality of those comments: the first one was based on an email digest of IHE that paraphrased (inaccurately, I would add) one thing Scott said. So, I’m guessing, that probably attracted a lot of rightwing, erm, enthusiasts there to jump up and down about liberal bias in the universities blah blah hakkakkwokkkk. They hadn’t read the article, they’d just read a quicky blurb in the email. Plus they’re a bunch of lazy imbeciles. So that clears that up!

Thanks for your intervention, Ophelia. I can’t quite believe that of all the things possible to say in response to my column — which was about the late Philip Rieff, a very smart and very irritating guy — the entire freaking discussion ended up being about a throw-away line making the obvious point that there are more right-wing loudmouths around than right-wing thinkers.

And even that was qualified with a parenthetical about how the left isn’t exactly teeming with heavy hitters, either.

I have a theory. It is that people are stupid. I call it the “people are stupid” theory to minimize the confusion it will sow. And yet my theory predicts that people will be confused by it, even so.

My pleasure, Scott. Yeah, very irritating derailment – if I’d had a brain in my head I would have tried to drag it back to Rieff, but I couldn’t help wanting to, um, mock the afflicted. But how ridiculous when your column was so detailed and so interesting. If it’s any comfort, it’s made me want to read some Rieff, right smart quick.

I personally thought that it was kinda rude; imagine “There are more atheist loudmouths around than atheist thinkers.” To my mind, it seemed to be fishing for an immediate reply, which could then be held up as being stupid.

The other thing that bothered me was that there didn’t seem to be any way to falsify the statement; if John Q Reader come up with a list of 10 plausible conservative thinkers, then this doesn’t prove anything, because either (a) they’re pundits, not thinkers and (b) there are still 10,000 conservative pundits that I haven’t mentioned that can be gestured at. John can’t win.

I still think that the throwaway line was badly judged and rude, but on re-reading the article it does seem a shame that people went for that line in particular; Rieff sounds like an interesting person who deserved to be talked about. That he wasn’t talked about was a shame.

Sorry. Wasn’t actually intending to insult you – was more flailing at the line of thought. But I admit that may be a distinction without a difference.

Oh, well, yeah – what the editors did with that line was ridiculous, I agree – now that was badly judged and rude, because they took a perfectly sane and reasonable observation of Scott’s and turned it into a silly ill-worded taunt. Good editors (she said, speaking as an editor) don’t do things like that – it’s grossly unfair to the writer, and misleading for the readers. If I were Scott I’d be really pissed. (Odd to think that I occasionally function as Scott’s editor – but all that ever involves is reading what he’s written and smiling happily.)

Yeah; irregular noun indeed. And the annoying thing about the editorial mess is that it doesn’t look at all like an irregular noun in the article, of course, because he immediately point out that it applies to both sides’ people.

Don’t blame the editors….I usually propose some kind of teaser, and did so in this case. Was it provocative — in the bad sense? Yeah, in hindsight it kinda looks that way. But it was also meant as a challenge to lefties: “Don’t assume all conservative writers are idiots like Coulter….”

But my real mistake was assuming that people would be interested in the substance of the article itself. Or rather, that they would actually read it before responding. At the time, I had not yet formulated the “people are stupid” theory, which adequately accounts for various observed phenomena.

Oh, the teaser was yours – okay, I’ll quit blaming the editors. Quite right about Coulter thing. (I often wish more conservative thinkers would come forward to repudiate fundamentalist know-nothingism and anti-intellectualism, as [Republican] Judge Jones did in Kitzmiller.)

But of course it’s not a mistake to assume that people would be (and were and are) interested in the substance of the article. Only a handful of people commented, they’ll be a tiny fraction of the people who read it. Commenters are always a tiny fraction of readers, and they’re not generalized samples of reader response.